The Shadow of the Torturer: The Book of the New Sun, Book 1

The Shadow of the Torturer is the first volume in the four-volume epic, the tale of a young Severian, an apprentice to the Guild of Torturers on the world called Urth, exiled for committing the ultimate sin of his profession - showing mercy towards his victim.

Gene Wolfe's "The Book of the New Sun" is one of speculative fiction's most-honored series. In a 1998 poll, Locus Magazine rated the series behind only "The Lord of the Rings" and The Hobbit as the greatest fantasy work of all time.

Night’s Master: Tales from the Flat Earth, Book One

Long ago when the Earth was flat, beautiful, indifferent Gods lived in the airy Upperearth realm above; curious, passionate demons lived in the exotic Underearth realm below; and mortals were relegated to exist in the middle. Azhrarn, Lord of the Demons and the Darkness, was the one who ruled the night, and many mortal lives were changed because of his cruel whimsy. And yet, Azhrarn held inside his demon heart a profound mystery which would change the very fabric of the Flat Earth forever.

The Big Sleep

Los Angeles PI Philip Marlowe is working for the Sternwood family. Old man Sternwood, crippled and wheelchair-bound, is being given the squeeze by a blackmailer and he wants Marlowe to make the problem go away. But with Sternwood's two wild, devil-may-care daughters prowling LA's seedy backstreets, Marlowe's got his work cut out - and that's before he stumbles over the first corpse.

Stiger's Tigers: Chronicles of an Imperial Legionary Officer, Book 1

The empire has endured many centuries but is now threatened by multiple wars and a major rebellion in the South. A nobleman from an infamous family, an imperial legionary officer, a fighter, and a right proper bastard of a man, Captain Ben Stiger finds himself reassigned from a crack legion to the rebellion simmering in the South. Placed in command of a truly terrible company, the 85th Imperial Foot, he is unknowingly sent on a suicide mission to resupply an isolated outpost, the garrison of Vrell.

The Sword of Rhiannon

Greed pulls the archaeologist Matt Carse into the forgotten tomb of the Martian god Rhiannon and plunges the unlikely hero into the Red Planet's fantastic past, when vast oceans covered the land and the legendary Sea-Kings ruled from terraced palaces of decadence and delight. Talented enough to co-write The Big Sleep film with William Faulkner and imaginative enough to pen the original screenplay for The Empire Strikes Back, Leigh Brackett is a giant in the science-fiction field, and The Sword of Rhiannon is one of her most popular adventure tales.

The Dying Earth

The stories in The Dying Earth introduce dozens of seekers of wisom and beauty, lovely lost women, wizards of every shade of eccentricity with their runic amulets and spells. We meet the melancholy deodands, who feed on human flesh and the twk-men, who ride dragonflies and trade information for salt. There are monsters and demons. Each being is morally ambiguous: The evil are charming, the good are dangerous. All are at home.

So You've Been Publicly Shamed

From the Sunday Times top ten bestselling author of The Psychopath Test, a captivating and brilliant exploration of one of our world's most underappreciated forces: shame. 'It's about the terror, isn't it?' 'The terror of what?' I said. 'The terror of being found out.' For the past three years, Jon Ronson has travelled the world meeting recipients of high-profile public shamings. The shamed are people like us - people who, say, made a joke on social media that came out badly, or made a mistake at work.

Majipoor Chronicles

The young street urchin Hissune gets his due for helping Lord Valentine regain his throne. As a reward, he is sent into the depths of the Labyrinth, a massive library of memory cubes in which the entire history of Majipoor is preserved. As Hissune prepares for a summons to return to Castle Mount, he relives the lives of Majipoor's most famous and notorious inhabitants.

The Android's Dream

A human diplomat creates an interstellar incident when he kills an alien diplomat in a most unusual way. To avoid war, Earth's government must find an equally unusual object: A type of sheep ("The Android's Dream"), used in the alien race's coronation ceremony. To find the sheep, the government turns to Harry Creek, ex-cop, war hero and hacker extraordinaire.

The Dispossessed: A Novel

Shevek, a brilliant physicist, decides to take action. He will seek answers, question the unquestionable, and attempt to tear down the walls of hatred that have isolated his planet of anarchists from the rest of the civilized universe. To do this dangerous task will mean giving up his family and possibly his life. Shevek must make the unprecedented journey to the utopian mother planet, Anarres, to challenge the complex structures of life and living, and ignite the fires of change.

Flowers for Algernon

Charlie Gordon knows that he isn't very bright. At 32, he mops floors in a bakery and earns just enough to get by. Three evenings a week, he studies at a center for mentally challenged adults. But all of this is about to change for Charlie. As part of a daring experiment, doctors are going to perform surgery on Charlie's brain. They hope the operation and special medication will increase his intelligence, just as it has for the laboratory mouse, Algernon.

Perdido Street Station

Beneath the towering bleached ribs of a dead, ancient beast lies New Crobuzon, a squalid city where humans, Re-mades, and arcane races live in perpetual fear of Parliament and its brutal militia. The air and rivers are thick with factory pollutants and the strange effluents of alchemy, and the ghettos contain a vast mix of workers, artists, spies, junkies, and whores.

Blindsight

Set in 2082, Peter Watts' Blindsight is fast-moving, hard SF that pulls readers into a futuristic world where a mind-bending alien encounter is about to unfold. After the Firefall, all eyes are locked heavenward as a team of specialists aboard the self-piloted spaceship Theseus hurtles outbound to intercept an unknown intelligence.

Ubik

Glen Runciter runs a lucrative business - deploying his teams of anti-psychics to corporate clients who want privacy and security from psychic spies. But when he and his top team are ambushed by a rival, he is gravely injured and placed in "half-life," a dreamlike state of suspended animation. Soon, though, the surviving members of the team begin experiencing some strange phenomena, such as Runciter's face appearing on coins and the world seeming to move backward in time.

Necronomicon

Originally written for the pulp magazines of the 1920s and '30s, H. P. Lovecraft's astonishing tales blend elements of horror, science fiction, and cosmic terror that are as powerful today as they were when first published. This tome brings together all of Lovecraft's harrowing stories, including the complete Cthulhu Mythos cycle, just the way they were when first released.

Nine Princes in Amber: The Chronicles of Amber, Book 1

Amber is the one real world, of which all others including our own Earth are but Shadows. Amber burns in Corwin's blood. Exiled on Shadow Earth for centuries, the prince is about to return to Amber to make a mad and desperate rush upon the throne.

I Am Legend

In I Am Legend, a plague has decimated the world, and those unfortunate enough to survive are transformed into blood-thirsty creatures of the night. Robert Neville is the last living man on earth. Everyone else has become a vampire, and they are all hungry for Neville's blood. By day, he stalks the sleeping undead, by night, he barricades himself in his home and prays for the dawn.

The Blade Itself

Logen Ninefingers, infamous barbarian, has finally run out of luck. Caught in one feud too many, he's on the verge of becoming a dead barbarian - leaving nothing behind him but bad songs, dead friends, and a lot of happy enemies. Nobleman, dashing officer, and paragon of selfishness, Captain Jezal dan Luthar has nothing more dangerous in mind than fleecing his friends at cards and dreaming of glory in the fencing circle. But war is brewing, and on the battlefields of the frozen North they fight by altogether bloodier rules.

Publisher's Summary

Follow the adventures of Nifft the Lean, the master thief whose felonious appropriations and larcenous skills will lead you through Stygian realms to challenge your most lurid fantasies and errant imaginings. Places where horror, harm and long eerie calms flow past the traveller in endless, unpredictable succession.

Travel with the man whose long, rawboned, sticky fingers and stark length of arm will lead you down to the vermiculous grottoes of the demon sea, to stand beneath the subworld's lurid sky and battle monsters who seem the spiritual distillations of human evil itself! We invite you to the very gates of Hell and beyond - come if you dare!

I had very fond memories of having picked up Nifft the Lean in a used book store, and quickly reading the whole work, swept away by the complex language, dark stories, and sense of place. Reality doesn't quite live up to memory, here. This book feels very much a product of its time, with the complex language (but not the elegance) of Gene Wolfe, the bizarre stories (but not the sense-of-wonder) of Jack Vance, and the anti-heroes (but not the characterization) of Fritz Leiber.

Still, there is lots to like. Though the book is 30 years old, it never feels dated. Also, the work follows the early 1980s trend of picaresque wandering through many unusual settings, some of which are really imaginative, and some of which are just plain disgusting. The main character is appealing, the language interesting, and the stories full of swash and buckling. So much fun to be had.

However, it never quite reaches the heights I was expecting, but is a (well-read) and solid listen if you are into Wolfe and Vance. If you haven't heard either of these others, they are probably better choices. In the meantime, I may try my battered paperback copy again.

If you could sum up Nifft the Lean in three words, what would they be?

Imaginative, Macabre, Humorous

What was one of the most memorable moments of Nifft the Lean?

There are MANY memorable moments in these Nifft stories and that's what exactly makes his adventures the classics that they are. Shea fills these luscious stories with myriad macabre creatures, odd but charming characters and an occasional wry sense of humor that doesn't undermine the seriousness of the danger. It's rare to find good fantasy stories that feature so many elements of horror and I've found this to be the BEST series of stories of its kind. The only other fantasy horror stories that I have found to be on its level are the Kane stories by Karl Edward Wagner.

What about John Morgan’s performance did you like?

John Morgan did a fine job with this reading. He stressed words properly at the right times for the best effect and added subtle nuances that made the drama very realistic. He not only maintained the proper tone throughout but clearly understood the material and really helped to bring the book to life. A splendid job indeed! Looking forward to more of this man's work.

Did you have an extreme reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?

It made me laugh many times, but most of all it created the most fascinating visuals in my mind that were as stark as those in any movie I've ever seen. Shea has an uncanny ability to evoke sophisticated creatures with strange behavior patterns that are incredibly realistic with all of the unique nuances of a person with a strange personality whom you might have met.Shea also has a wickedly clever sense of humor and imbues in his characters with charming personalities. He is very adept at knowing when to inject this humor and when to let the dangers play out in a serious manner so that the humor never 'winks' at you but is often simply a result of dire predicaments that are as funny as they are frightening.It's an exhilarating experience to go on these adventures with Nifft and it's a series that I wish would never end.

Any additional comments?

Michael Shea is one of the MOST underrated writers of our time. He stories are like a wonderful merging of Jack Vance, H.P. Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith with a dash of Robert E. Howard. This man will be considered a legend in the future when many more people have discovered his work, but he's living right now and needs all the encouragement he can get to continue writing these fantastic tales that will thrill, horrify and delight generations to come. I urge anyone interested in dark, gloriously sophisticated fantasy imbued with clever humor to PLEASE seek out this man's work and give it your attention. You won't be sorry.